Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics by Bart D. Ehrman Read Free Book Online Page B

ascribed to Hermagoras which support the view under discussion; but either the attribution is wrong or the author was some other Hermagoras. For how can they possibly be by the Hermagoras who wrote so much so admirably about Rhetoric, since (as is clear also from the first book of Cicero’s
Rhetoric
) he divided the subject matter of Rhetoric into Theses and Causes? (
Institutio Oratio
3.5.14) 44
    At other times there was less confusion, as in a case reported by Suetonius:
    For while some tell us that this same Ennius published a book “On Letters and Syllables” and another “On Metres,” Lucius Cotta is right in maintaining that these were not the work of the poet but of a later Ennius, who is also the author of the volumes “On the Science of Augury.” (
On Grammarians
1.3) 45
    Numerous cases of homonymity have been uncovered only in modern times. 46
    What matters particularly for my purposes here, however, is the fact that some ancient critics posited homonymity as a chief reason that writings were transmitted under a false or wrong name, and were therefore to be termed. This is explicitly stated by the fifth-century Neoplatonist Olympiodorus, when he wants to explorethe claim is repeated some years later by his student Elias. 47
    As is well known, the problems posed by homonymity were recognized by critics in the early Christian tradition as well. The best-known instance involved the third-century Dionysius of Alexandria, who argued that the book of Revelation was not written by the disciple John the son of Zebedee, but by some other John:
    That he was called John, and that this work is John’s, I shall therefore not deny, for I agree that it is from the pen of a holy and inspired writer. But I am not prepared to admit that he was the apostle, the son of Zebedee and brother of James, who wrote the gospel entitled According to John and the general epistles. On the character of each, on the linguistic style, and on the general tone, as it is called, of Revelation, I base my opinion that the author was not the same. (Quoted in Eusebius,
H.E
. 7.25) 48
    Among other books in question were 2 and 3 John, which Jerome suggested may have been written by John the Presbyter rather than John the son of Zebedee (
Vir. ill
. 9); and the Shepherd, attributed to Hermas, but to which Hermas? Origen (
Romans Commentary
10.31) and possibly Eusebius (
H.E
. 3.3) maintained that it was the Hermas mentioned by Paul in Romans 16:14, putting the compositionof the book back into apostolic times by a companion of the apostles, whereas the Muratorian Fragment insists that Hermas was the brother of the second-century bishop of Rome, Pius, and that it had been written “recently, in our own times.” This was the view, of course, that eventually won out. Analogously, but somewhat later, the Adamantius who wrote De recta in deum fide was sometimes understood, wrongly, to be Origen; Rufinus reworked the dialogue by altering the places that showed it was written after Origen’s day in order to use it to vindicate Origen’s orthodoxy. 49
Anonymity
    There are far fewer anonymous writings from antiquity, and from Christian antiquity, than of other kinds of writing (orthonymous, falsely ascribed, forged). The reason is quite simple: anonymous works were almost always ascribed, usually incorrectly. This is due to what Wilamowitz famously described as a
horror vacui
. Speyer goes further in speculating that when libraries were collecting works, authors were assigned to them, with the most famous representatives of each genre then being ascribed works actually written by (anonymous) others: divine hymns were attributed to Homer, fables to Aesop, medical treatises to Hippocrates, and so on. 50
    Ancient critics sometimes discussed anonymity and its reasons, as when Clement of Alexandria claimed that the apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews anonymously because he realized that he was not much appreciated by the Jewish people to whom it was